Youth, cousin held for nurse’s gang-rape

Ghaziabad: Eight days after a 25-year-old nurse was gang raped when she was returning home in the evening in Sikroad village, the police managed to arrest two men who committed the crime while a third person, said to be the instigator, is still at large.
According to police, the accused — Ankit Jat (26) and Mohit (24) alias Rahul Jat—are cousins and work in a medicine manufacturing company on Meerut Road. On the day of the crime, the two were heading home but consumed liquor midway. Though they wanted more booze, they had run out of money. “They called one Kapil of Sikroad village who also work with them in the factory and asked him to bring some money,” said Hari Narayan Singh, SSP. “The three met on one of the bylanes in Sikroad village. However, Kapil did not bring money and instead suggested that they rob a passerby,” said Singh. “The stretch was deserted as it was already dark and raining. As they waited, they saw the woman walking alone. They followed her and pounced on her,” said Singh.
According to police, they had initially planned to rob her but when she started screaming, they dragged her to the paddy field. “When the woman was being dragged by Ankit Jat and Mohit, who later took turns to rape her, Kapil fled the scene,” said Singh.
Initially it was a blind case for police as they couldn’t find any evidences except the two names —Ankit and Mohit— which the criminals addressed each other. Five teams from crime branch and Sihani Gate police station worked in close coordination piecing together whatever meagre leads they could lay their hands on. After questioning more than 60 suspects over seven days, they zeroed in on prime suspects and arrested them from Karhenda cut.
“We scanned nearly half-a-dozen villages including Duhai and Sikroad and picked up over 60 suspects whose names were Ankit and Mohit but none of them matched the discription given by the rape survivor,” said Singh. “In the meantime, we got to know from our sources about one Ankit of Faridnagar village and Mohit of Duhai village. When we scanned their locations on the day of the crime, we became almost certain of their involvement but we wanted to doubly check. So we investigated further and found that ever since the day of the crime, these two were frequently moving from one place to another and had also not reported for work,” said Singh.

On Friday night, they were picked up from Karhenda Cut. When questioned, they confessed to their crime and also named Kapil who had actually instigated them to commit the crime.
The police also recovered the woman’s mobile phone which was snatched by the accused. The accused had broken the mobile phone and dumpted it in Duhai drain as the crime was widely reported in the media.

An official closely associated with the investigation later said that the accused had developed cold feet a day after the crime as it was widely reported in newspapers. “The accused, while committing the crime, addressed each other by their names which the victim in her statement had given to police,” said an official.
“Since Ankit had a history of crime and in 2010 he had gone to jail in a loot case, his parents, after learning his name from the newspaper, asked him whether he was involved in this but he denied,” added the official.